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| LOT 50 FRANKLIN CARMICHAEL, O.S.A., R.C.A.
MILL HOUSES, WEST RIVER, oil on canvas, signed and dated 1934;
together with:
MILLHOUSES, WEST RIVER, 1930, pencil, inscribed “West River, Aug. 1930” (8 ins x 10 1/4 ins; 20 cms x 25.6 cms)
30" x 36"; 75 cm x 90 cm
Auction Estimate: $600000 / $800000
(2)
Provenance:
Estate of the artist.
By descent to the present owner.
Exhibited:
62nd Annual Exhibition, Ontario Society of Artists, Art Gallery of Toronto, Toronto, May, 1934, cat.no.17.
Canadian Paintings in Oil, Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, Aug. 24-Sept. 8, Catalogue #289.
Light & Shadow, The Work of Franklin Carmichael, The McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, May 4-August 6, 1950, no.45, page 87, reproduced in colour.
Franklin Carmichael, Art Gallery of Sudbury, Sudbury, May 12- September 4, 2005.
Literature:
Megan Bice, Light & Shadow: The Work of Franklin Carmichael, The McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, 1990, pagee 85 and page 87, reproduced in colour.
Celeste Scopelites, Franklin Carmichael, Art Gallery of Sudbury, 2005, pages 23-25, working sketch for Millhouses, West River, 1930, reproduced and Mill Houses, West River, 1934, reproduced in colour.
The Group of Seven’s imagery of industrial subject matter marks an important contribution to this movement’s overall production despite some of the contradictions this subject seems to represent for a group of painters now so well-known for their emphasis on a so-called untouched and barren wilderness. Such paintings indeed illustrate the ways in which industrial development and progress had already long been a presence in the regions north of Canada’s major urban centres. Carmichael’s studio-produced oil paintings concentrating on industrial subjects were a major contribution to this genre which Harris and Jackson also explored. But for Carmichael it was the single-industry villages and towns which dotted the northern Ontario-Great Lakes region which interested him most. His exploration of the industrial subject was both focused and limited for Mill Houses, West River is one of just four known industrial subjects the artist developed into the large oil on canvas exhibition format; others include In the Nickel Belt (1928), A Northern Silver Mine (1930) and Coal Chute (1942).
The accompanying pencil sketch for Mill Houses dated August 1930 confirms the artist developed the painting after a trip to Cobalt, Ontario to which he had travelled that year, but the work is also part of his exploration of the La Cloche region which dominated his last decade of art production; West River is located in the Mongowin Township in the district of Sudbury between the village of Whitefish Falls and the town of Espanola. Carmichael had been exploring this region broadly known as La Cloche after a relative had introduced him to these northern regions of Lakes Huron-Bay of Islands in the mid-twenties. Industrial expansion including timber extraction had been ongoing since the 1870s and such mills had been of interest to Carmichael in other works he did of the Severn River region.
Mill Houses includes no people yet the workers houses are testimony to an undeniable human presence. History on this mill’s activity is sparse but the foreground the rail line and cars which stretch across the foreground suggest a mill still in operation and symbolically linked to a national rail network via which timbers were exported to diverse national and international markets. Carmichael rarely became directly engaged in social comment and critique of any sort, but this scene made for a complex composition which nearly appears lifeless. As Carmichael continued his explorations of the La Cloche and its striking white quartzite rocks throughout the thirties his vision of wilderness landscape was tempered by such industrial realities. Always a strong colourist Carmichael chose for this canvas a harmonious tonal range of yellows, greens, blues and browns, but these warm tones do not convince of a landscape rich in forests but one already cleared by industry.
Mill Houses, West River was premiered at Toronto’s Ontario Society of Artists held in the winter-spring of 1934 and followed by another showing at the Canadian National Exhibition in the late summer-early fall of 1934. In both exhibitions he clearly considered this work his most important entry for at the OSA show he exhibited only that work and at the CNE it was his only major oil on canvas painting. Mill Houses was not shown again during the artist’s lifetime which ended but a decade later. It would be more than a half century until the work was shown again in the artist’s centennial retrospective of 1990.
This canvas was framed by The McMichael Canadian Art Collection in preparation for the 1990 exhibition.
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